


Fish or Cut Bait

by eternalbreath



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-09
Updated: 2013-05-09
Packaged: 2017-12-10 20:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternalbreath/pseuds/eternalbreath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Heart to heart talks in the Esthar sewers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fish or Cut Bait

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kurushi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurushi/gifts).



> Written for the prompt: Irvine and Quistis are by far my favourites. I'd enjoy reading about either of them individually, or together. A story that looks at their adult lives, because how can you follow up from saving the world in high school, would fascinate me. I also really wanted to know more about Laguna, and Cid and Edea. Anything dealing with their backstories or post-canon lives would delight me.

"I'm so _bored_ ," Quistis says, and Irvine almost lets it shock him enough to slip on a patch of slimy goo left behind on the narrow walkway from a deadly meeting between a monster and her whip.

The light flickers above them, industrial grade, but yellow and spaced far enough apart to make it feel more and more like a horror movie the deeper they go down the narrow passages of Esthar's sewers. Topside it was a technological marvel; down here it was muck and grime like every other sewer in the world, and he'd sure know given the number he's seen in recent months.

"You got to be pulling my leg," Irvine says, scraping a chunk of remains off his boot over the cleanest concrete he can find, which isn't much. "This is high class work."

Quistis glares at him. She looks immaculate still, which is just downright unfair given that he's covered in the remains of nameless creepy crawlies that he's taken out since lowering himself down the hole.

"I should be doing something interesting," she says. "Writing my book. Working on the advanced placement program. Instead, I'm on my fourth mission to Esthar in three months to deal with the Lunar Cry disaster because the government won't listen to us."

"You do realize most people wouldn't qualify those things interesting as such," he says, avoiding at all costs the mention of politics. "Least of all our assigning commander."

Quistis turns on her heel and stomps away into the dim interior without another word, leaving Irvine to hurry and catch up. Out of the political discussion frying pan and straight into the mentioning-Squall fire. _Walked right into that one_ , he thought. Selphie had warned him before they even put foot outside Garden not to do it. Figures.

Working in silence isn't all bad. These sewers are crawling with mutated baddies, and the quiet lets Irvine be aware of his surroundings and tell drips and drops of water from the lurking creeps and a nasty, splashing jellysquid coming up to serve them for lunch. It's plebe work, only difficult in the sense that Lunar Cry monsters are more unpredictable and risky; Irvine gets it, he does. He goes where they tell him and pulls his paycheck and doesn't rock the boat otherwise — rocking the boat is what's got Quistis so bent out of shape.

"It's not fair," Quistis says again an hour later when she's wiping blood and splatter out of her hair from a close call with a mutate and Irvine's gun.

"It's not dragon blood, you'll live."

"No," she says. She coils her whip and sinks down against the wall next to the freshly dead monster like it's not even there. "Look where we are."

"In a sewer," Irvine says. "Killing mutates because Esthar won't cop to the facts that their ability with swishy transports and awe-inspiring technological marvels fails to translate to an ability to secure the sewage system and let a team in here to wrap it up tight." Irvine knows he signed at least two confidentiality agreements to even be here doing this job; mark him down on the anti-isolationist list.

"You know what I mean," she says, morose, and Irvine starts because she sounds nothing like herself — tired and worn down.

"I don't," he says, sliding down next to her. "But you sure do sound like you'd rather be rolling into the drink for the benefit of the jellysquids, so why don't you fill me in?"

"All I get to do recently," she says carefully, sounding more composed, "is go on missions. Stupid missions like this one that any Level 15 SeeD could handle; not an A ranked SeeD. I go on these missions, I file paperwork, I clean up, I get a few days off, then I'm assigned another mission just like it."

"Part of SeeD," he says. "We signed up for it."

"I was a teacher," she says quietly. "Then I helped save the world, and I thought that at least would afford me some respect and freedom. Now I'm just another weapon."

Irvine looks at her and assesses, then decides nothing can be worse than sitting next to a reeking dead body of a mutate having a heart to heart, not even Quistis's temper. "You and Squall haven't been on the best terms since your proposal to suspend usage of GF."

Quistis sighs and tips her head back against the brick. Irvine's a little too precious about the slime coating the wall and leaves his head where it is. "Does everyone know? Is there a new gossip bulletin Xu hasn't shut down?"

"Friends gossip," Irvine says. "Zell heard your screaming fight, too. Called it 'fucking epic' if I recall."

"Figures."

"You know Squall's only balking because Esthar has come out in support of the movement based on Odine's studies," Irvine says, risking the politics; he's lost it. "If Laguna hadn't opened his trap about it, it's likely Squall would've been all in. He's been having the same headaches as the rest of us."

"Ugh, don't talk to me about Squall and Laguna," Quistis says. "They make me furious."

They sit in the relative silence for a few minutes. A rat crawls by them, unperturbed by their presence, to start gnawing on their stinky friend. Somewhere, farther away, the rush of water sends echoes down the tunnel. 

Irvine's no scholar, and he likes reading, but only for fun, and his investment in the politics of whatever Balamb Garden will become just isn't up to him. He would rather hang out at the bar on his downtime than fight with Squall and Xu, or go on stupid missions that rarely require the energy or the interpersonal skills of administrative bullshit some of his friends love to be mired in, hip deep and sinking. 

When a second rat joins the first and Quistis still hasn't spoken or moved, Irvine says, "You should quit."

Quistis gapes at him like he's sprouted three pairs of tentacles from his face. 

"You've got to get on doing what makes you happy, and not go through the motions just to pay for a spot at the table," Irvine says. "Us and the scary trip to the future where we squeaked through by the skin of our teeth? That whole shebang made us excellent weapons because we were just trying to survive and have a world we could live in after. We paid for the world with ourselves."

Quistis nods, slowly.

Irvine huffs and tries not to be intimidated by the look of her eyes, trusting, like he knows what the fuck he's doing. "So toss it in. Put in your two weeks, then turn around and offer them a consultant contract. If they don't take it, who gives a flying fuck. You're you — you've saved enough to sit on a beach with a fruity drink for damn near five years."

"Bored in five days," Quistis says, smiling.

"Yeah," Irvine says. "That's not my point. A beach, another job, freelancing _from_ the beach — you can have whatever. What do _you_ want?"

Quistis frowns and looks away, toward the gently swirling, dark waterway. "I want to save the world again," she says. 

"I'm never going to back to that freaky castle with its terrible rugs to indulge a savior complex, not even for a good friend," Irvine says. "I draw the line."

"No, but..." she shrugs. "Differently. I don't just want to be remembered for things I did as a teenager; it would be like I died in the future, instead of coming back to _live_."

"Burying yourself under Squall's shadow won't help that goal any," Irvine says. "Dark and deep in there, and for all I respect Cid Kramer, he did everyone a whopping huge disservice placing Squall's friends there in the first place."

Quistis looks away — down the tunnel, toward their goal — and says, "I've never known much but Garden, and the parts I do remember aren't all that great."

Quistis had faced down monsters, wrapped them in her own personal magic and wiped them from existence, flayed them to stillness with a well-timed whip, and on one notable occasion, saved Irvine's hide by taking the head off a dragon about to turn him crispy with a well placed Firaga and Save the Queen, and did it all like it they weren't just kids thrust into the impossible. In the time since their return, Irvine knows now that her biggest fears aren't the things that go bump and then rip your limbs off while you're still fumbling for a light, but of being erased, left out of the decisions, tossed into the fray with no by-your-leave or say-so. 

Quistis wants to be a leader. A goddamned politician. _Well_ , he thinks, _at the very least she'll be good at it_.

"Quistis Trepe afraid of a little freedom?" Irvine says, probably too harshly. "Afraid to hoe your row alone? Really?"

Quistis snorts. "Cut the sarcasm."

"Give it a little thought," Irvine says.

"I will," she says. 

He goes to stand up, but her hand on his shoulder stops him. She looks at him seriously, leaning close, and Irvine can't resist. "Do I get a smooch for my excellent advice?" He leers appropriately.

Quistis shakes him a little, but doesn't let go. "You're such a jerk. No."

"Well, them's the breaks."

"I just wanted to say thanks," she laughs now, serious mood banished. "I hate asking for advice, anyway, these days. It's...not the easiest thing."

"And I appreciate lending a hand where I can," he says. "I know just the thing you can reward me with, too."

"Oh my god," she says, laughing again. "You're such a pervert."

"I meant," he says, "that I would consider your bill paid in full if we could move on from the smelly carcass you chose to have your breakdown by." He gestures to the monster behind her, where the first rats have called their friends, families, and extended networks to dinner.

She giggles — _Quistis Trepe, ladies and gentlemen_ , he thinks, _she's actually a giggler when placing her friends in downright hostile olfactory conditions_ — and says, "I'll owe you one," she says, and they stand.

"Are you sure?" Irvine says as they head down the tunnel. "Just one little makeout session. I'll even wipe the slime off before I dive in."

"Shut up, Irvine," Quistis says, and Irvine smiles at the happy tone of her voice.


End file.
